"F—ing retarded," Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items...

So take that!

What CV? Don't you have any GOOD news to print? Something that will make us happy? Well, What about this?

Excerpt: "A mere half-hour after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner praised the "necessary" and "very substantial" actions of the Bush and Obama administrations to "break the back of the financial crisis," one of the world's leading financial minds said Thursday that the United States is in the same economic predicament today as it was in 2007, predicting that within 25 years the Federal Reserve "will be gone."

Gone within 25 years? Let's analyze the "published" balance sheet and see if there's anything to this story?

Actually, CV has dug up, specifically for you readers, just EXACTLY what is on the mysterious FED balance sheet...

Ah well what can I say? Perhaps I'll end this thread on the topic of "monkeys"... More specifically, the likelihood that some will come flying out of your butt anytime soon... Now all I need to do is try and handicap the odds of that happening, or that we'll get a correction of the nature indicated on the following chart... Most are betting on the "monkeys" at this point...

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I thought some here could appreciate this...I woke up to the sounds of the business report on the radio...announcer said S&P futures down 6 points. Turned on the TV only to see that he had mis-read the script.

ben -it's the e-o-m midnight sales that were remarked upon by the wmt exec (ceo?), i.e., when the debit cards of po' folks on gubmint aid get re-charged.next e-o-m's are halloween and november in midst of xmas sales so maybe these two won't reflect the phenomenon as clearly. sorry i didn't make it to the walmart in les affluent area last night. up too late and up too early all this past week.

72, ok, I was wondering if it was only a specific date, either way, I bet it's not every wal mart, probably a more clear trend in harder hit areas, we have a serioulsy screwed up thing going on right now where some places are in full on depression and others seem like they never even really went into a serious recession.

I won't go to WMT on halloween, I stay in on halloween, I hate that holiday.

one thing you can do on the ground floor in the well-to-do areas to figure out if things are good/bad is to go to a high end consignment shop where the well off are going to bring in all of last years designs or older stuff they just don't want anymore. Around here they have slowed down but not to a stand-still, there is one I visit every time I go up close to Chestnut Hill to see how busy it's been. One of the clerks told me that some of the non-working spouse "allowances" have been cut and they aren't seeing people coming in with a trunk full of high end clothes to dump off there anymore. A lot of rich people do this because it helps them feel better about themselves and there's a little tax break.

what I have noticed of late when I go is that it seems you find more men and women looking there for interview outfits.

ha! halloween's my fave. sadly, it's become increasingly pablumized and safely secularized. i lobbied our village council to stop moving around the observance date of halloween so that trick-or-treat would coincide with surrounding communities that coordinated to observe it on "safe" nights only, i.e., not on fridays or saturdays. they finally did so, agreeing it was not their place to mess with it anymore than they would set the date to observe christmas, good friday, easter, yom kippur, or rosh hashanah. believe it's 2nd only to xmas in terms of retail sales.this halloween i'll be at a live performance of red priest after having returned from the neil gaimin halloween weekend gathering of american gods" at house on the rock

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Amazon.com fell 1.6% to $154.47 on Friday morning after McAdams Wright Ragen downgraded the stock to a hold rating. Analyst Dan Geiman cited the stock's high valuation as the main reason for the call; Amazon shares had recently crossed his $140 price target. "We're still quite favorable on the company's prospects in the coming quarters, despite near-term headwinds related to marketing-related expenses supporting Kindle and ongoing investments to increase the company's fulfillment capacity, as well as more difficult sales and margin comparisons," Geiman wrote. He raised his price target on the stock to $160.

$25 mln payout rumored on 1.3750 digitalWritten by Jamie ColemanOctober 1, 2010 at 13:11 GMT Traders note talk that a bank will have to payout $25 mln to a customer if EUR/USD is above 1.3750 at 10 am…Expect heavy defense of that level…

Karen -- CAT looks like it fell out of bed this morning, but upon closer inspection I think it is still above a trendline touched on 9/17. NFLX, on the otherhand, is toast. New puts soaring. Makes uninsured diamond losss somewhat less painful.

Oooh..didn't think of that...did feel all around inside the tub but didn't look in the catch. It isn't the end of the world... it was a side stone, not the center one, thank goodness. Unfortunately, it was only a little more than a year old since I got a whole new ring for our 10th last year.

Friday, October 1st, 2010, 10:25 amHomebuilder Lennar Corp. (LEN: 15.79 +2.67%) completed a $740 million acquisition of distressed properties. The portfolio includes 306 properties and 397 loans, most of which are nonperforming.

The portfolio, which came from three large financial institutions that were not identified, has a total unpaid principal balance of $529 million and REO properties valued at $211 million. Approximately 65% of the acquired assets are residential and 35% are commercial. Rialto Investments, Lennar's origination subsidiary, is responsible for oversight and day-to-day management of the properties.

It is in virtually no country's interest -- including that of the United States -- for China's economic development to derail. China is the world's strongest growth engine, its largest creditor and its biggest trade partner.

most of the consignments are going to cater toward women mainly because in general they care more about men when it comes to appearance, the one I know of that I mentioned earlier has some greats mens stuff from time to time though. I've gotten some really cool ties there.

ben -but it's those same women who from time to time go through their hubby's closets to weed out the "out-if-date" styles or items that they're just tired of seeing on their spouses ("honey, have you seen my seersucker jacket?")

It is a beautiful day here, but I find myself feeling rather sick to my stomach. Some guy from the Conference Board in NY was on the noon business hour spouting off on how we hadn't done enough stimulus, but there wouldn't be a double dip...meanwhile I'd just like for us to take our medicine and get it over with so I can find out what things are like on the other side. I find that I personally have a very active (and negative) imagination, so I'm not so secretly hoping that it might not be as bad as I fear, and can we just go ahead and get it over with already while I still have some money left? Love how the SEC has completely punted the flash crash too. The problem with abandoning the rule of law is that when the government stops following the law the people do too.

a little late in the season now, but I would like to get a new seersucker....I will look at one of those shops first. Those are always good for summer weddings and at this stage in my life I usually have 3-4 to attend each summer.

I am confused. The kind folks on CNBC said it was a fat finger back in May. They said the 'algo' excuse was nonsense. Now here we are nearly 5 months later and the SEC says it was 'algos'? I thought CNBC were the authority on financial news? Jeeez louise.

Gold seems to be saying all other talk is BS. The 10yr & 30yr are saying listen to gold (and golds cousin silver). Will the MSM ever rebel and call out the government? I have a feeling October will wipe out all gains for the year pushing the SPX under 1000 (minimum).

Tho I feel one coming on: U.S. stocks strengthen; Citigroup gains 5%2:42 PM ET 10/1/10 | SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks found some footing in afternoon trading Friday, with all three major indexes trading higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 56 points, or 0.5%, to 10,844. The blue-chip average had dipped into the red briefly as investors fretted over weak components in the Institute for Supply Management's September index on manufacturing. The S&P 500 rose 6 points, or 0.5%, to 1,147. The Nasdaq Composite rose 3 points, or 0.1%, to 2,372. Energy and financial sectors led the S&P 500, with Citigroup up nearly 5%.

But I really feel the equities are running into resistance at this juncture...

Any move higher (spurred on by the typical late Friday crap that we've seen all summer - and into Monday Morning futures), would probably surprise NOBODY... Especially since it's the 2nd day of 401k money used to bid prices up...

Although theoretically, today is DAY 1 of that, and typically they chase the high beta (so why are NFLX, AMZN, etc. down)?

Were the "allocations" switched to increase COMMODITY exposure? Hmmm... Could mean a "top" in those is coming soon...

Anyway - Even if we're up on Monday, I don't see it pushing much past the Thursday high (if it even gets there at all)...

It just doesn't seem like there's room to move without a meaningful correction...

And similarly to ending the last Q by keeping bids under prices, on the other side of the fence, nobody probably wants to start the new quarter behind the 8 ball...

In football terms... You don't want the other team running the 2nd half kickoff back for a touchdown on your ass...

it's a dump, enough said, driven through many times on my way to and from PSU, got stranded there once in the middle of winter driving home from Erie, but that time I did stay in a holiday inn express.

Not sure if anyone remembers my friend with Macadamia nut farm on the Big Island that told me he was going to have to give it back to the bank.. (and he had $225K into it!) cuz they wouldn't refinance him.. Well, lo and behold, the bank calls his wife and asks why they aren't trying to get a loan modification.. She was undone.. She said they had tried SIX TIMES !! looks like the banks are more anxious to work deals.. interesting at any rate..

I've taken some real interesting in combing through all the financial reports of that REIT I mentioned to you all the other day....it's a big portfolio, over 900 properties in 35 states and over 5 million square feet of real estate in Texas alone.....I've been looking at equity price results given their 20% write down of the estimated share value,....the whole thing is interesting, should see the variable rate debt maturing for them in 2011....holy crap

here are the top 10 tenants the last two figures represent the % of total annualized income of the portfolio and the % of total square feet of the portfolio:

oh this is funny.. 3 times i've re-booted my streaming quote list thinking it had stopped.. NO! the market has stopped.. if i stare at it long enuf, i get a little green or little red blink.. blinking christmas tree lights gone bad!!! in every way..

We are out of LQD, by the way... that flash crash was not caused by me selling, however.

Something big is on the way... CB interventions in FX and gold seem to me to be possibilities. A bond break at the front end is not impossible, if we get a decent jobs number. I would be sleeping badly if I owned JPY, GLD or TLT. Or LQD, LOL...!!!

Mulling some trades, probably short the long end this weekend. By the middle of next week I will take up some more strong dollar trades (shorting gold, yen, crude perhaps). I can see commodities being hit hard fairly soon. Equities may be mixed, and bonds may be killed.

This analysis is predicated on a BTE jobs number, which might be politically expedient. The thing is we will get one, eventually..

Have a good weekend everyone! Thanks for holding NFLX down for me...theta be damned. I see a pumpkin farm in my near future. The best part is the pumpkin catapult...not much better than the splat from a giant pumpkin being launched out into a harvested corn field...ahh, the midwest. How did I wind up here? Maybe I can write Lloyd's name on the pumpkin before the launch.

There are any number of European banks that might be rumored to be distressed, on any given day, with very good reason. Apart from the Irish situations which are now government problems, there are all the Spanish banks, any one of which might be at death's door. If at some point it is no longer "contained" then there will be "contagion".

There are no POMOs and no auctions of the long duration bonds in the week directly ahead of us. So we might actually have, you know, a market... just for a while. Long bonds are now both technically and fundamentally extremely vulnerable to any kind of good economic news.

"The [SEC] report said the starting point of the flash crash was the sale of 75,000 so-called e-Mini futures contracts on the S&P 500 stock index, worth $4.1bn, which a large institutional investor placed via an automated trading system."

The CME claims: "The 75,000 contracts represented 1.3% of the total E-Mini volume of 5.7 million contracts on May 6 and less than 9% of the volume during the time period in which the orders were executed. The prevailing market sentiment was evident well before these orders were placed, and the orders, as well as the manner in which they were entered, were both legitimate and consistent with market practices. "

We are long JNK, HYG and short the long bond. We are fearful for the P/L of recent fixed income inwestors. Too much complacency in bond land regarding the inevitability of QE2, deflation and anything bond-friendly.

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